**SPOILERS** Outlandishly complicated film-noir thriller that has the wife of some big time L.A gangster blackmailed by both her lover and his girlfriend as well as this Texas private investigator who doubles as a womens lingerie salesman at a local, exclusively for the rich and famous, upscale yuppie department store.You can never get a handle to what exactly big time city mobsters wife Lucinda, Susan Blakely, sees in her boyfriend Scott, Dale Midkiff, since he's about as far away from her in lifestyles and interests as the distances that the North & South Poles are from each other. Lucinda is living the life of luxury and sure as hell wouldn't want to give it up for this oily and sweet talking Romeo who masquerades around as some big shot businessman Using his girlfriend Charlene, Beth Toussaint, to double as his personal secretary Scott has Lucinda think that he's a big success by always never being able to answer the phone, when she calls him. Scott is always Trying to impress Lucinda in thinking he's always involved in some big stock deal or corporate merger. Lucinda is not stupid and can easily find out by just checking where the phone number belongs to, the bottom of the barrel Astor Hotel, that the heel is putting her on in order to fleece her out of a couple of hundred thousand dollars and then , with Charlene, check out of town like the two did a number of times to impressionable old but rich widows.It also turns out that this private detective, or private dick, named Norm, Mark Davis, is also on to what both Scott and Charlene are up to in their blackmailing Lucinda and is in turn blackmailing them in the fact that their wanted for robbing a rich Texas woman out of her life-savings. During all this Lucinda's mobster husband Gene, John Saxon,is busy getting arms and heads broken in his dealing with some very uncooperative home builders and union leaders It seems like Gene couldn't care less what Lucinda is doing behind his back as long as it doesn't interfere with his business practices.Norm starts to put the squeeze on the two blackmailing sleaze balls by first planting a bomb in their car, thats not powerful enough to kill them, just to get their attention and then somehow gets involved with Lucinda. Lucinda got so sick of being shaken down and was now ready to tell her husband the truth about her and Scott, in making her think that her lover, that very blackmailing creep Scott,is in trouble in that her husband found out about him and her and is going to have him rubbed out. Feeling that the best way to go with this, about to fall flat on it's face, shake down scheme is by playing on Lucinda's unnatural and even insane love for Scott. Norm while having a lunch rendezvous with Scott has the surprised and now ex-blackmailer, with Norm now taking over the job, get the living hell beaten out of him in full view, in Norm needing witnesses to make it look good, of some two dozen customers at a local Japanese restaurant with him being one of the persons who does the beating. Scott battered and bruised tells Lucinda that if she doesn't give the persons who worked him over the money, $100,000.00, the next time he won't be so lucky. Lucinda not willing to part with the cash so fast and knowing form personal experience that it won't be the last time she'll hear from the blackmailers has one of her husbands hit-men, some creepy-looking guy with a beard and dark glasses named Albert, knock off the guys, including Norm, who beat Scott up.The movie then really goes off the deep end of reality when we then see Gene and the man for all seasons-like Norm, who we were just lead on to believe was killed, in a restaurant looking at a number of hot photos of his wife and Scott in bed together giving us the impression that Gene knew all about Lucindas cheating on him and that Norm was really working for him right from the start! There's so many false deaths in "Blackmail" where we're lead to at first believe that the person, like Norm, that was killed can suddenly and without any explanation what so ever just magically comes back to life that you start to wonder to yourself if even your alive or dead by the time the movie is over. The film leads up to this unbelievable conclusion with Lucinda and Scott as well as her husband Gene and, the just who the hell is he working for anyway, private eye Norm ending up either dead or just faking it that it. This all makes you think if those involved with the movie ever bothered to even read the script and then seeing how ridicules it is would have just walk off the set and not come back unless major changes were made.

Lucinda's husband Gene ignores her, except when he wants sex. And sex with Gene is a chore, not a pleasure. Scott gives Lucinda what she wants. One day, an envelope with naughty photos of Lucinda and Scott arrives at Lucinda's house, with a request for thousands of dollars made up of words put together from various sources as in a ransom note. Scott has a business partner named Charlene; their business is not exactly what Lucinda would have expected.This movie has lots of great plot twists and the occasional car chase, as well as steamy sex. Mac Davis, normally a good guy, manages to be deliciously evil but still likable after his character makes a career change. He starts out as a friendly, knowledgeable lingerie salesman who waits on Lucinda, but he manages to get involved in other areas of Lucinda's life. Later, the movie gets violent, and the ending is not pleasant, and certainly not what I expected. The plot twists are interesting, and if nothing else, this film is worth seeing just for Davis' performance.

If you are at all curious about seeing this movie, I shall do you a big favor and convey the entire movie in just two sentences.Woman A is married but cheating with Man A, who blackmails her in cooperation with Woman B. Man B then blackmails Man A and Woman B.Don't worry, I didnt spoil the ending for you - because there isn't one.All in all an agonizing way to kill 2 hours.Two words: "Body Armour". BLEH!

A noir-ish attempt with a betrayal-and-treason plot that seems straight out of a Jim Thompson novel. Unfortunately, the directing is below average, unable to create any atmosphere of feeling. Somebody like John Dahl or Stephen Frears would have been better suited.